Shareholder-value-based
brand strategies
Received: 8th January, 2001
PETER DOYLE
is professor of marketing and strategic management at the University of Warwick. Previously he has taught at
London Business School, INSEAD and Stanford University. He acts as a consultant to many top international
companies, including Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Cadbury Schweppes, Tesco, Hewlett-Packard, Novartis and AstraZeneca.
He has written over 100 books and articles on marketing strategy and brands. His latest book, ‘Value-Based
Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Corporate Growth and Shareholder Value’ was recently published by John
Wiley.
Abstract
Companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Xerox, Heinz, Apple and Gillette possess great brands
and outstanding brand management competencies, yet they have failed to generate value for
shareholders in recent years. What these companies are learning is that having strong brands which
consumers value is not enough. Whether strong brands create value for shareholders depends upon
the economics of the markets in which they operate and the strategies managers pursue. By
underestimating shareholder value dynamics, marketing managers risk misallocating resources and
handicapping the firm’s opportunities to move into new markets and find new, more profitable,
growth opportunities.
This paper looks at how brands contribute to the firm’s strategy and how brand planning needs to
be geared to market economics and management’s central objective of creating shareholder value.
INTRODUCTION
This paper shows that many marketers
hold a view of brands that is too naı¨ve.
Through an uncritical belief in the
importance of brands and the case
for brand investment, the views of
marketing professionals often become
marginalised when top management
debate the big strategic issues facing
their business. Marketers are seen as
unsophisticated advocates, rather than
serious professionals able to engage in
an objective review of the problems
and opportunities facing the firm.
Brands are the ‘big thing’ in
marketing. Marketing is not a highly
developed discipline like economics
or finance. Marketing lacks theory,
breakthrough insights and firm principles
that can guide the development
of strategy. But marketing does ‘own’
the concept of the brand, and brands
are now recognised by investors as a
crucial source of strength and value in
many industries. Brands add value by
differentiating the firm’s product and
providing consumers with confidence
in the rational or emotional benefits it
offers.1 To most marketing professionals,
brands are the very heart of
marketing.
But the case for brands can be
oversimplified. After all, in recent
years, virtually all the companies that
were regarded as the paragons of brand
building have stumbled. Procter &
Gamble (P&G), Coca-Cola, Gillette,
Apple and Marks and Spencer have all
recently fired their chief executives
because of their failure to create value
for shareholders. Indeed, many of the
most successful companies in the last
decade — Dell, Vodafone, General
Electric — have hardly been con-
INTRODUCTION
This paper shows that many marketers
hold a view of brands that is too naı¨ve.
Through an uncritical belief in the
importance of brands and the case
for brand investment, the views of
marketing professionals often become
marginalised when top management
debate the big strategic issues facing
their business. Marketers are seen as
unsophisticated advocates, rather than
serious professionals able to engage in
an objective review of the problems
and opportunities facing the firm.
Brands are the ‘big thing’ in
marketing. Marketing is not a highly
developed discipline like economics
or finance. Marketing lacks theory,
breakthrough insights and firm principles
that can guide the development
of strategy. But marketing does ‘own’
the concept of the brand, and brands
20 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001
Peter Doyle
Warwick Business School,
University of Warwick, Coventry
CV4 7AL, UK
Tel: 44 (0) 2476 523911;
E-mail: P.Doyle@warwick.ac.uk
Shareholder-value-based
brand strategies
Received: 8th January, 2001
PETER DOYLE
is professor of marketing and strategic management at the University of Warwick. Previously he has taught at
London Business School, INSEAD and Stanford University. He acts as a consultant to many top international
companies, including Coca-Cola, Nestlé, Cadbury Schweppes, Tesco, Hewlett-Packard, Novartis and AstraZeneca.
He has written over 100 books and articles on marketing strategy and brands. His latest book, ‘Value-Based
Marketing: Marketing Strategies for Corporate Growth and Shareholder Value’ was recently published by John
Wiley.
Abstract
Companies like Procter & Gamble, Unilever, Xerox, Heinz, Apple and Gillette possess great brands
and outstanding brand management competencies, yet they have failed to generate value for
shareholders in recent years. What these companies are learning is that having strong brands which
consumers value is not enough. Whether strong brands create value for shareholders depends upon
the economics of the markets in which they operate and the strategies managers pursue. By
underestimating shareholder value dynamics, marketing managers risk misallocating resources and
handicapping the firm’s opportunities to move into new markets and find new, more profitable,
growth opportunities.
This paper looks at how brands contribute to the firm’s strategy and how brand planning needs to
be geared to market economics and management’s central objective of creating shareholder value.
brands that customers wanted. Unfortunately,
their low prices and excessive
investment levels failed to generate
sufficient cash to build businesses that
were viable long term. Recently many
dot.com companies followed this
pattern in even more exaggerated
terms, spending 80 per cent of their
capital on advertising and selling at
prices below their costs. Hardly
surprisingly, this type of brand
development eventually led to a
massive shake-out in the sector.
To understand how brands can add
value one needs to start with a
model of how the firm creates value.
There is now wide acceptance for
what strategists call the ‘resourcebased
theory of the firm’.3 This
represents something of a shift from
the marketing-based idea of the firm
popularised by Theodore Levitt in his
famous ‘marketing myopia’ article.4
The resource-based theory proposes
that defining a firm in terms of its assets
and core capabilities offers a more
durable basis for strategy than a
definition based upon the customer
needs the business seeks to satisfy. In
other words, sustained success depends
upon more than merely identifying
market opportunities; more critically
it depends upon having the special
capabilities to deliver at lower cost or
higher quality than the competition.
Figure 1 is a modified representation
of the resource-based view of the firm.
Starting from the top, the objective of
strategy is to create shareholder value, as
measured by rising share prices or
dividends. In competitive markets the
key to creating shareholder value
is possessing a differential advantage
— giving customers superior value
through offers that are perceived as
either superior in quality or lower in
spicuous in their creation of great
brands.
Marketers need a more sophisticated
understanding of when brand-building
investments make sense. The basic rule
is that brand investments pay off when
they generate returns that exceed the
company’s cost of capital. The P&G
share price fell when investors believed
that management was breaking this
principle. Fundamentally, as is shown
below, to generate an adequate return,
brand investments must increase the
level of the firm’s cash flow and accelerate
the speed of cash flow, extend
its duration or reduce the vulnerability
of these flows. The most important
drivers of cash flow are whether the
brand can accelerate growth or enhance
prices. If brands cannot produce
these effects, management is better off
focusing away from brands to other
sources of value creation.
BRANDS AS RESOURCES
Defining how brands work starts by
recognising that marketing and brands
are not objectives but strategies. The
governing objective of business is to
create value for shareholders. As a
recent Business Week survey concluded,
‘the fundamental task of today’s CEO
is simplicity itself: Get the stock price
up. Period.’2 Top managers nowadays
do not hold their jobs long if they do
not increase the financial value of the
firm. Strong brands, customer awareness,
market share and satisfied customers
are not goals in their own right,
but means to create shareholder value.
Sometimes these branding and
marketing strategies create value;
sometimes they do not. For example,
Freddie Laker and Equitable Assurance
created high awareness and great value
HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001 21
SHAREHOLDER-VALUE-BASED BRAND STRATEGIES
customers, the firm must have outstanding
business processes that enable
it to be more innovative than its rivals
(eg Sony, 3M); have operations that
deliver customer solutions at lower
total cost (Wal-Mart, Toyota); or
be outstanding at managing customer
relationships (Dell, American Express).
It is important to recognise that these
core processes are not independent. For
example, if a company’s marketing
strategy is based on achieving superior
customer relationships through individualised
solutions, it will also need
the product development and supplychain
management processes to design
and deliver the tailored responses
efficiently. Without the combination of
effective core processes it will not be
cost. Achieving this differential advantage
in turn depends upon the
effectiveness of the firm’s business
processes. The core business processes of
most firms can be grouped into three
categories: the product development
process, which enables a firm to
create innovative solutions to customer
problems; the supply-chain management
process, which acquires inputs
and efficiently transforms them into
effective products and services; and
the customer relationship management
process, which identifies customers,
understands their needs, builds customer
relationships and shapes the
perceptions of the organisation and its
brands.
To be able to make superior offers to
22 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001
Figure 1 Intangible assets and the resource-based theory of the firm
Tangible Technol- Strategic Brand Human Organisation
assets ogical assets assets resources and culture
Core capabilities
Product development
Supply chain management
Customer relationships
Differential
advantage
Shareholder
value
Market
economics
Core business
processes
Resources
Investment
DOYLE
insights into the role of brands and the
creation of shareholder value. First,
marketers should beware of exaggerating
the importance of brands. In many
industries much more important drivers
of core processes and shareholder value
are the firm’s patents, technology and
particularly the skills and commitment
of its staff. An impression of the relative
importance of brands against other
tangible and intangible assets is given
by some estimates from Interbrand
(Table 1).5 Only in luxury consumer
goods are brands the dominant source
of value. In many of the newer,
faster-growing industries such as IT,
pharmaceuticals and financial services,
brands play a much smaller role. If
companies overinvest in traditional
branding activities, they underinvest in
other tangible and intangible resources.
For example, an underinvestment in
new technology and lack of genuine
innovation appears to have played an
important part in the decline of P&G
and Heinz.
Secondly, strong brands can be
undermined by a poor marketing
strategy. A poor marketing strategy is
one that is not geared to creating
shareholder value. Marketers often set
their strategic objectives to maximising
awareness, growth or market share
rather than the value of long-term cash
flow. When this happens the brand’s
value is eroded by the cost of servicing
too many low-profit accounts, by
overinvestment in marketing communications,
and by underpricing.
Finally, successful brands impact
most directly on the customer relationship
management process — enhancing
the confidence and satisfaction
customers gain from the product.
But effective brand management also
engages with the product developable
to execute the strategy. Secondly,
while the company has to manage
these processes, it does not have to
conduct them. Increasingly firms are
part of networks and processes are
outsourced to specialists. Companies
like Dell and Virgin, for example,
focus on the product development
and customer relationship management
processes and outsource most of their
supply-chain activities.
Core business processes are the
drivers of the firm’s differential
advantage and its ability to create
shareholder value. But these processes
themselves are founded on the firm’s
core capabilities, which derive from the
resources or assets it possesses. A firm
cannot have superior business processes
unless it has access to the necessary
resources and the ability to coordinate
them effectively. Resources can be
divided between tangible and intangible
assets. Traditionally, the firm’s
tangible or balance sheet assets were
seen as its most vital resource — its
factories, raw materials and financial
assets. But in today’s information age,
investors increasingly view intangible
assets — the firm’s knowledge, skills
and reputation — as the key to
superior business processes. In 2000,
tangible assets accounted for less than
20 per cent of the value of the world’s
top 20 companies. Finally, maintaining
the up-to-date asset base on which
everything is founded depends upon
investment. It requires investment in
physical assets, but even more in
recruitment, training, staff development
and, in the case of brands,
advertising and communications.
Brands form part of the intangible
asset base that drives the firm’s core
business processes. The resource-based
model of the firm suggests several
HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001 23
SHAREHOLDER-VALUE-BASED BRAND STRATEGIES
unprofitable. Market economics mean
that even strong brands find it difficult
to make a decent return in some
markets; whereas in others, even
mediocre brands can make good
profits.
What determines the attractiveness
and profitability of a market? The two
most important factors are the intensity
of competition and the level of pressure
from customers. When competition is
intense, brands may be unable to generate
returns above the cost of capital.
Four factors typically determine the
intensity of competition: the amount of
excess production capacity, the degree
of product standardisation, the number
of competitors and the growth in the
market. The level of customer pressure
is a function of two determinants: the
price sensitivity of customers and their
negotiating leverage.
Market economics explains much of
the paradoxical performance of companies
like P&G, Gillette, Unilever
and Kellogg. These companies are
stars at brand management but they
have delivered very poor returns to
shareholders in recent years. This is
because the grocery markets in which
they predominantly operate are characterised
by intense competition caused
ment and supply-chain management
processes. In the past, brands like
Jaguar, MG and Amstrad have seen
their financial values fatally eroded by
the companies’ inability to provide the
quality, delivery and performance to
make a reality of the desired images.
Brand management must be seen as an
integrated part of the total management
process rather than a specialist marketing
activity. Brand management only
becomes a core capability of the firm
when it is effectively coordinated with
the firm’s other resources to enhance all
the core business processes.
BRANDS AND MARKET ECONOMICS
The resource-based model of the firm
has one important weakness: it assumes
shareholder value is solely dependent
upon the firm’s competitiveness. Unfortunately,
the possession of a differential
advantage is only half the picture. The
other half is the attractiveness of the
market in which the business operates.
Industries differ greatly in profitability.
For example, prescription drugs, soft
drinks, tobacco and cosmetics have
been consistently highly profitable;
whereas textiles, steel, car manufacturing
and mining have been consistently
24 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001
Table 1 Relative importance of brands and other assets
Tangibles
%
Brand
%
Other intangibles
%
Utilities
Industrial
Pharmaceutical
Retail
Info-tech
Automotive
Financial services
Food and drink
Luxury goods
70
70
40
70
30
50
20
40
25
0
5
10
15
20
30
30
55
70
30
25
50
15
50
20
50
5
5
Source: Interbrand
DOYLE
uncertain. Weak brands in attractive
markets (such as Lotus SmartSuite and
Motorola mobiles) are equivocal: if the
brand leader is not aggressive and
buyers are not price sensitive these
brands can make modest profits. But in
the long run they are unlikely to be
profitable (their returns will be less than
the cost of capital) because customers
can choose better alternatives. Strong
brands in unattractive markets (such as
Weetabix and Stella Artois) will usually
be profitable, but their weak growth
outlook will mean shareholder returns
are unlikely to be exceptional.
The importance of market
economics to a brand’s potential value
means that marketers need a more
sophisticated approach. Expressing a
‘passion for the brand’ has become a
badge of a marketing manager’s
machismo. Passion no doubt has its
uses, but it is hardly a sensible
mechanism for allocating scarce
resources among competing alternatives.
Managers have to recognise in
today’s hyper-competitive markets that
by excess capacity, me-too products,
own-label products and little growth.
They also face a high level of customer
pressure from the large supermarket
groups, which are increasingly price
sensitive and possess immense negotiating
power. The result has been that
while these brands maintain high
awareness and market shares, pressures
on profit margins and the absence of
volume growth have resulted in a
decline in the financial value of these
brands and the companies that own
them.
Figure 2 summarises these dilemmas.
Strong brands in attractive markets will
always be profitable and create value
for their shareholders. Examples of
these include Microsoft Office, Nokia
mobile telephones and Mercedes S
class. Weak brands in unattractive
markets will always be unprofitable —
investment will not produce returns
above the cost of capital. Examples
include Rover, Smiths crisps and
Radion. For the other two strategic
brand positions, the results are more
HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001 25
Figure 2 Market economics and the value-creating potential brands
Equivocal
can be a profitable brand
High value-creating
potential brands
Always value-destroying
brands
Low value-growth
potential
Attractive
Market
economics
Unattractive
Weak Consumer brand strength Strong
SHAREHOLDER-VALUE-BASED BRAND STRATEGIES
difference between a strong brand and
a weak brand is that the former has
more positive associations with these
four determinants of value — if it is
properly managed. In general, the task
of brand management is to ensure that
the level of cash flow is high, that it
achieves its full cash-generating potential
fast, that the brand endures, and
that the cash flows are not put at
unnecessary risk.
This paper will now briefly summarise
the evidence of how successful
branding impacts on cash flow and
then illustrate the practical implications
for managers.7
Brands increase the level of cash
flow
The level of cash flow is the most
important determinant of shareholder
value. A brand’s cash flow is determined
by four factors: its price,
growth, costs and investment. If a
brand can achieve a brand premium
this has a major impact on its value.
There is considerable evidence that
successful brands do achieve price
premiums. Successful brands should
also grow faster, again increasing the
level of cash flow. Brand leaders
commonly have lower costs, particularly
because of scale economies in
marketing spend. Finally, strong brands
can have lower investment levels (as a
proportion of sales) because of their
greater potential leverage over the
supply chain.
Accelerating cash flow
Because money has a time value,
opportunities to reduce the lag in a
brand’s achievement of its potential
increase the value of the brand to
some brands, even those maintaining
high awareness and market share, do
not represent sensible investments for
shareholders. Rather than swimming
against the tide, it is better either to
refocus on innovation and strike off in
new directions towards markets with
more favourable economics or, if there
are no viable profit opportunities, to
give the money back to shareholders
through share buy-backs or raised
dividends.
BRAND STRATEGIES AND FINANCIAL
PERFORMANCE
The value-creating potential of a brand
is determined by its differential advantage
and its market economics. But
whether the brand achieves its potential
depends upon a third factor — the
strategy the managers pursue.
Many great brands have failed to
deliver for their companies because
marketing managers have not understood
the objective of a brand
strategy. Evidence shows that they
commonly pursue objectives such as
sales, market share, customer awareness
or favourable attitudes.6 Such goals lead
to marketing decisions that destroy
rather than create value. The objective
of a brand strategy should be one thing
only — to maximise shareholder value.
The corollary is to understand what
determines shareholder value. Again
this is well understood by investors —
value is determined by expectations
about the present value of the longterm
cash flow the strategy will
generate.
The present value of a brand’s future
cash flow is a function of four factors:
the level of its cash flow, the speed it
comes in, the duration it lasts, and the
riskiness of these future returns. The
26 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001
DOYLE
erode investors’ confidence in the
business and ultimately undermine the
viability of the brand.
DEMONSTRATING EFFECTIVE BRAND
MANAGEMENT
To illustrate the problem faced by
companies like P&G, Unilever and
Heinz, the paper will look at
Upbrand.
Upbrand is the leading brand in its
sector of the household goods market.
Sales are £100m, making it comparable
in size to Unilever’s Comfort
or P&G’s Daz. It has been No. 1 for
over 20 years and remains outstanding
in terms of awareness and preferences.
Its pre-tax profit margin is a healthy 12
per cent and its EVA (post-tax profits
less capital charge) is over £3m.
Surely, such a 20-year marketing
success should be a source of acclaim in
the company. Unfortunately, investors
think otherwise. Upbrand has two
major problems. First, it is in a
no-growth market. Investors know it is
virtually impossible to create long-term
value added without volume growth.
Secondly, there has been a slow decline
in Upbrand’s margins. To maintain
volume in a sector attracting increasing
own-label competition, management
has not been able to raise prices
sufficiently to recover rising operating
and marketing costs. Annually, costs
have risen 1 per cent faster than prices
and investors expect similar pressures in
the future.
Table 2 shows how analysts typically
estimate the value-creating potential of
brands and the companies that own
them. Explicit forecasts of cash flow are
usually made for five to ten years
ahead, and then the value of the brand
at the end of the period is called
shareholders. Again there is evidence
that consumers respond quicker to
marketing campaigns and new product
introductions when they are familiar
with the brand name and have positive
attitudes towards it.
Extending the duration of cash flow
The longer a brand name endures,
other things being equal, the greater
its value to investors. One of the
important ways brands add value is
through increasing the longevity of the
product. Most of the world’s most
valuable brands have been around for
30 years or more. Well-known brand
names have longevity because consumers
believe in them, are more willing
to try new versions, and refer them
to new generations of customers.
Reducing the risk attached to future
cash flow
Investors discount future expected cash
flow by the company’s cost of capital.
The cost of capital is a function
of the risk investors perceive in the
brand’s future. The greater the risk,
the lower the brand is valued. Strong
brands should offer lower perceived
risk because of higher consumer loyalty
and reduced vulnerability to competition.
If investors believe a brand’s cash
flow is stable and predictable it will
have a higher net present value and
consequently create more shareholder
value.
The task of the brand manager is to
exploit these advantages so as to
increase the present value of the brand’s
future cash flow. When marketing
managers are not geared to maximising
the value of the long-term cashgenerating
potential of the brand, they
HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001 27
SHAREHOLDER-VALUE-BASED BRAND STRATEGIES
Upbrand is typical of the company’s
portfolio, then a similar fall would be
expected in its share price. Indeed,
this, or worse, has happened to many
well-known branded goods companies
in recent years. Investors realised that
strong brands cannot offset the effects
of unfavourable market economics and
perhaps misguided brand strategies.
Table 3 explores whether alternative
strategies could curtail the decline of
Upbrand. As described earlier there are
four alternatives — strategies to increase
the level of cash flow, its speed,
duration or stability. This paper will
explore only the first of these, which is
generally the most important. Growth
is a powerful way to increase the level
of cash flow and shareholder value. As
Table 3 shows, if Upbrand could increase
sales from its historic plateau to
growth of 5 per cent a year, this
would add £23m to its value. Unfortunately,
a growth strategy in these
mature markets is usually a trap that
managers pay dearly for in terms of
declining margins and cash flow. Increasing
volume by almost 30 per cent
its continuing value. The shareholder
value created by a brand is the value of
its cash flow over the planning period
plus the continuing value. Cash flow is
what is left for shareholders — net
operating profit after tax (NOPAT) less
net investment.
Upbrand’s initial shareholder value
is £84m. This is estimated by the
standard perpetuity method, dividing
NOPAT by the brand’s cost of capital,
which is taken here to be 10 per cent.
Essentially the perpetuity method assumes
that the brand earns just its cost
of capital in the future.8 Unfortunately,
as described, investors are less optimistic
about this assumption. They believe
that holding volume will mean erosion
of margins as costs rise faster
than prices. This leads to a significant
fall in NOPAT over the years and
a corresponding decline in the predicted
cash flow. Net investment (after
depreciation) is assumed to be zero
because volume is constant over the
period. But the net result is that the
brand’s value to shareholders sinks to
£57.8m — a decline of 31 per cent. If
28 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001
Table 2 The Upbrand shareholder value analysis (£m)
Year
0 1 2 3 4 5
Price £
Quantity m.
Sales
Operating costs
Marketing expenses
NOPAT
Net investment
Cash flow
Present value of cash flow
Cumulative present value
PV of continuing value
Shareholder value
Initial shareholder value
Shareholder value added
1.0
100.0
100.0
66.0
22.0
8.4
0
8.4
1.0
100.0
100.0
66.7
22.2
7.8
0
7.8
7.1
7.1
1.0
100.0
100.0
67.3
22.4
7.2
0
7.2
5.9
13.0
1.0
100.0
100.0
68.0
22.7
6.5
0
6.5
4.9
17.9
1.0
100.0
100.0
68.7
22.9
5.9
0
5.9
4.0
21.9
1.0
100.0
100.0
69.4
23.1
5.3
0
5.3
3.3
25.2
32.6
57.8
84.0
26.2
DOYLE
volume falls by 5 per cent annually
as a result of higher prices or cuts in
marketing spend, shareholder value is
still significantly higher than under the
current strategy. Indeed, one of the
great advantages of strong brands is
that they have lower price elasticities.
One of the commonest strategic mistakes
in managing brands is failing
to take advantage of these economic
principles.
SUMMING UP
Being passionate about brands is a
questionable attribute for marketing
professionals; far better to be rational
about managing them. Brands are
economic assets, like factories, shops
or patents, whose function is to
create value for shareholders. Managers
operate rationally when they manage
brands to maximise the discounted
value of their future cash flows.
Brands are important because, when
they are effectively integrated with the
firm’s other tangible and intangible assets,
they create the capabilities to build
superior business processes. These in
turn enable the firm to develop the
competitive advantage that is a basis for
superior returns. Brands, like other assets,
need to be invested in, otherwise
in five years is unlikely to be attainable
at an economic cost.
For strong brands operating in unfavourable
market conditions, tactics to
raise price are often a better option.
Tactics can include better negotiating
with the trade, reduced discounts,
category management initiatives, better
customer segmentation and premium
line extensions. Here a 1 per cent
annual price increase (ie the same inflation
rate as operating and marketing
costs) would increase the brand’s value
by £3.6m; a 5 per cent increase would
raise its value by a massive £130m.
The other ways of increasing cash flow
are cutting operating and marketing
costs and reducing the level of investment
behind the brand. In principle,
cutting operating costs has the biggest
leverage. But in practice, most wellmanaged
companies have by now exhausted
most of the opportunities for
substantial cost cuts.
What deters brand managers from
considering price increases and cuts in
marketing expenses is that they are
likely to reduce sales. But such objections
are based on a misunderstanding
— the objective of marketing should
be to increase the value of cash flows,
not sales. Maximising sales is a recipe
for ruin. As Table 3 shows, even if
HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001 29
Table 3 Options for Upbrand in preserving shareholder value
Shareholder value added (£m)
Change in volume % pa
5% 0 5%
Increase growth
Price increase 1% pa
Price increase 5% pa
Operating costs cut 5%
Marketing costs cut 10%
Investment level cut 10%
67.4
2.0
63.1
3.5
13.1
28.0
26.2
3.6
130
16.6
4.2
17.1
23.2
– – – – –
SHAREHOLDER-VALUE-BASED BRAND STRATEGIES
rather than solely marketing criteria
such as market share or consumer attitudes
and awareness.
References
(1) See, for example, Aaker, D. A. and
Joachimsthaler, E. (2000) ‘Brand
Leadership’, Free Press, New York; Pringle,
H. and Gordon, W. (2001) ‘Brand
Manners’, John Wiley, Chichester.
(2) Business Week (2000) ‘The CEO Trap’,
Business Week, 11th December, pp. 48–59.
(3) Collis, D. and Montgomery, C. (1995)
‘Competing on Resources: Strategy in the
1990s’, Harvard Business Review, July/August,
pp. 119–128; Peterlaf, M. A. (1993) ‘The
Cornerstones of Competitive Advantage: A
Resource-Based View’, Strategic Management
Journal, July, pp. 179–192.
(4) Levitt, T. (1960) ‘Marketing Myopia’,
Harvard Business Review, July/August, pp.
24–47.
(5) Perrier, R. (1997) ‘Brand Valuation’,
Premier Books, London, pp. 43–53.
(6) Evidence that marketing managers are
orientated to objectives other than
shareholder value is contained in the annual
surveys of the IPA/KPMG (2000) ‘Survey
of Finance Directors’ Attitudes to
Marketing and Advertising’, IPA, London.
(7) The financial principles and the evidence of
how brands affect cash flows are detailed in
Doyle, P. (2000) ‘Value-Based Marketing:
Marketing Strategies for Corporate Growth
and Shareholder Value’, John Wiley,
Chichester.
(8) Fuller explanations of these valuation
methods are presented in Doyle, Ibid., pp.
32–65; or Brearley, R. A. and Myers, S. C.
(2000) ‘Principles of Corporate Finance’,
New York, McGraw-Hill.
their value erodes. But this is not a
blank cheque — just as bad market
economics have made investing in UK
textile or car factories a misguided
strategy, so sometimes it can be for
brands.
Whether a brand will create value
for shareholders depends upon three
factors. First, it should have a differential
advantage in lower costs or superior
perceived quality. ‘Quality’ here may
be in terms of perceived functional
benefits or the emotional associations
the brand’s image conveys. A differential
advantage translates into a cash flow
gain through the potential of superior
profit margin. The second determinant
of value creation is market economics.
A market’s attractiveness changes over
time. In some markets, however strong
the brand, excessive competition and
powerful price-sensitive buyers make it
very difficult to earn returns that cover
the brand’s cost of capital.
Finally, brand value creation depends
upon a strategy based on maximising
the present value of future cash flow.
This means objectively projecting future
market economics and assessing
the implications for future investment
in the brand. It also means aligning
sales objectives, prices and marketing
spend to shareholder value creation
30 HENRY STEWART PUBLICATIONS 1350-231X BRAND MANAGEMENT VOL. 9, NO. 1, 20–30 SEPTEMBER 2001
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